Karnataka Congress legislator and former minister HK Patil has said that “over 19 lakh EVMs have gone missing between 2016 and 2018”.
HK Patil said this during a special debate on electoral reforms in the Assembly. While many other members expressed their views on corruption and electoral irregularities in the system, Patil said there are a “lot of doubts about EVMs” while maintaining that the Election Commission had made “no attempt to alleviate this suspicion. The number of missing EVMs is shocking.”
“The EC has to respond to these charges. How can anyone rule out the possibility of these missing EVMs being misused? If the EC does not respond to questions on what has happened to these EVMs, our suspicion on EVM malpractice will only grow stronger,” the Congress leader added.
He said, “Some doubts have been haunting eve-ryone since the voting began through EVM. The Election Commission and the government need to clarify these doubts.” He said no clarifications had been made so far.
Reacting to Patil’s allegations, speaker Vish-weshwar Hegde Kageri said. “I will write a letter to the Election Commission on this.”—KMS
